The focus of this thesis is on elite members of the Chagga ethnic group. Originating
from the fertile yet crowded slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, this group is amongst the
most entrepreneurial and best educated in Tanzania. In the literature on ethnicity,
elites are usually understood as playing a key role in the imagining of ethnicities, while
at the same time usually being venal and manipulating ethnicity for purely instrumental
means. Yet this approach not only risks misrepresenting elites; it also clouds our
understanding of ethnicity itself. This thesis interrogates themes of elites, politics and
ethnicity through an examination of the trajectories of Chagga experience from the
1850s to the present.
Any discussion of Chagga ethnicity must have at its centre place - the landscape of
Kilimanjaro, and the kihamba banana garden. Ideas of Chagga ethnicity were shaped by
how the very first European explorers and missionaries saw the landscape of the
mountainside. This formed how the colonial Tanganyikan state treated the Chagga
people, placing them in an advantageous position through education, and a wealthy one
through the growing of coffee. In the 1950s, the Chagga ethnic group came under a
single political leadership for the first time with the introduction of a Paramount Chief.
This decade marked a period of Chagga nationalism. The role of intellectuals in the
articulation and imagination of Chagga ethnicity is examined through two Chaggaauthored
ethnohistories. After independence in 1961, the advantages of the colonial
period placed Chagga elites in key roles in the new state. However, as Tanzania moved
towards Julius Nyerere’s ujamaa socialism, the policies of the state began to clash with
the more capitalist outlook of the Chagga elite. Nevertheless, through educational
achievement and international migration, members of the Chagga elite were able to
remain influential and powerful. As such, they were in an ideal position to take
advantage of the political and economic liberalisation, even as new challenges emerged
from within Kilimanjaro itself. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the role of
ethnicity in the 2005 Presidential elections in Tanzania.
This thesis makes a contribution to the literature on ethnicity in Africa by providing an
account of elites that is more nuanced than in much of the existing literature. Even
though Kilimanjaro saw one of the strongest manifestations of ethnic nationalism during
the colonial period, Chagga elites contributed greatly to the nation-building project in
postcolonial Tanzania. Tanzanian nationalism, however, did not destroy a Chagga
identity, but rather enabled a new imagining of Chagga ethnicity which today continues
to have a role and saliency within the Tanzanian nation.